


Girls Just Wanna

by AryaNoName (merrymegtargaryen)



Series: Westeros Academy [11]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 15:10:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/pseuds/AryaNoName
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...get their ears pierced. Naturally, it goes poorly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls Just Wanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [judypoovey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/judypoovey/gifts).



“I’m thinking of piercing my ear again.”

Sansa looked up from her copy of Maiden Fair Magazine and gave her roommate a critical look. “You have a problem.”

“What, because I like piercings?” Jeyne Poole turned to examine one ear and then the other in her mirror. “Piercings are sexy.”

Sansa tugged self-consciously at her own unpierced ears. “They’re all right.”

The gesture did not go unnoticed by Jeyne.

“You should really pierce your ears,” she said, hopping onto Sansa’s bed. “I have some dangly earrings that would look great on you. I mean, obviously you’ll have to wait a few weeks, but you should really do it!” Her eyes widened. “You should let me do it!”

“Absolutely not,” Sansa said flatly. 

“Oh, come on, Sans, it’ll be fun—”

“Jabbing a needle through my ears is supposed to be fun?!” Sansa clapped her hands over her ears. “No! Besides, my parents would kill me if I got them pierced without their permission.”

“What are they gonna do, chop your ears off?” Jeyne taunted. “What’s done is done. They might get a little mad but you were going to pierce your ears someday. Why not now?”

“Because you are fourteen and haven’t been professionally licensed to stab my ears,” Sansa pointed out.

“You’re such a baby,” Jeyne huffed, swinging to her feet. She stretched and paused, tilting her head ever so slightly in Sansa’s direction. “But you know, Joffrey Baratheon really liked Margaery Tyrell’s earrings…he said so at lunch the other day.”

Sansa turned tomato-red. “Well…I mean…I would never do anything for a boy, of course…”

“Of course,” echoed Jeyne, pointedly not looking at the Joffrey Baratheon poster Sansa kept on her side of the room. The teen pop sensation had had Sansa’s heart ever since his hit “Swaggy Love”.

Sansa bit her lip. “Well…you’ve pierced your own ears, right?”

“Right.” Though this was more out of necessity than personal preference; the Poole family was extremely religious and frowned upon piercings. In fact, the only jewelry Jeyne’s four older sisters ever wore were purity rings and seven-pointed-star necklaces.

“And nothing bad ever happened…right?”

Jeyne shrugged. “Not really. I mean, Dad wasn’t too happy, of course, but he never does anything. And your parents probably won’t, either.”

Sansa considered this. She didn’t run into her father that often at school, and when she did, she could always keep her hair over her ears. And she could always just delay a visit home so that her mother wouldn’t see. And it wasn’t as if her siblings were going to tell; the first rule of being a Stark was to never rat out another Stark. 

“Oh, all right,” she said, eliciting a shrill squeal from Jeyne. Sansa just hoped she wouldn’t live to regret it.

.

Sansa started to regret it. 

Jeyne cleaned her ear and the earrings with some Vodka they’d stolen from Robb and Theon’s room. 

“Is that sanitary?” Sansa had asked.

“It’s alcohol, of course it’s sanitary,” Jeyne had scoffed before taking a swig. Then she made Sansa hold very still while she clutched her giant unicorn and bit down on a sock.

“On three,” said Jeyne, readying the earrings. “One…” 

Sansa felt something sharp shove into her earlobe and she screamed into the sock.

“You said on three!” she accused when her ear had stopped throbbing long enough to talk.

“I didn’t want you to tense up,” Jeyne said, shrugging. “Okay, now the other one.”

Sansa screamed a second time, and then a third time for good measure. “That hurts!”

“Yes, but now it’s over,” Jeyne said patiently. “Drink?”

.

Sansa’s ears hurt long after they were pierced, though. She was able to ignore it the first couple of days because Jeyne said it was normal, and look, her cartilage piercing was red and swollen too, it would be fine.

But it wasn’t fine. 

“It’s been over a week and my ears still hurt!” Sansa complained in the shower.

“It’s always possible something went wrong,” Jeyne said miserably in the next stall. 

Sansa’s shower curtain was shoved open and she tried to cover herself. “Arya!”

Arya was scowling at her from outside. “You got your ears pierced and didn’t tell me?!”

“What, like you want your ears pierced?” Sansa snorted. “Isn’t that a little girly for you?”

“Who said it was my ears I wanted pierced?” Arya demanded hotly. 

“I don’t pierce nipples,” Jeyne giggled from the next stall.

Arya opened her moth to retort but Sansa wrenched the curtain back into place. “Do you mind? I’m kind of naked here.”

They heard Arya huff and storm out of the bathroom.

“Anyway, Mum really wants me to come home this weekend,” Sansa said as if nothing had happened.

“Are you going to tell her?” Jeyne asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Sansa. “She’ll just yell at me for being irresponsible and make me take the earrings out. I’ll just avoid her.”

But no one avoids Catelyn Stark.

Sansa hid in her room for much of Friday night and Saturday morning, and she was almost successful, except that Catelyn dismissed everyone after lunch and made Sansa stay to help her clean up the kitchen.

“Why do I have to clean up?” Sansa groused.

“Because I’ve barely seen your face since you got here last night,” Catelyn said sternly. “But you know what I have seen?”

“Let me guess: my poor attitude?” Sansa said sarcastically.

“Your infected ears,” Catelyn said bluntly.

Sansa winced. “Um…about that…”

“I was a teenager once too, you know,” Catelyn said in a wry voice. “Let me guess: Jeyne’s work?”

Sansa gave a miserable nod.

“I thought as much. Well, come here; let me see it.”

Sansa winced as her mother examined her ears.

“Mm-hmm. These are infected. You’ll have to take them out.”

“But I don’t want to,” Sansa cried. “Joffrey likes earrings, and all the other girls have them, and I’ll be a loser forever—”

“Yes, dear,” Catelyn gently spoke over her. “But you’re putting your life at risk with this kind of infection. We’ll get them re-pierced when they’ve healed—by a professional.”

After she cleaned up Sansa, Catelyn called up Vayon Poole and made him bring Jeyne over so that she could clean her piercing, too. The girls were both in tears but Catelyn promised that she would take both of them to the mall to get their ears re-pierced when they had healed (Jeyne asked if she could also get a nose piercing, to which Catelyn said no do you want your sisters to send you to prayer camp again).

The three of them were just settling down to watch A Little Princess and share a tub of chocolate ice cream when Ned dragged Arya into the living room. “While you’re removing piercings, I think you should take a look at this one.”

“But ahm ha’ co’!” Arya protested. 

“Arya, a tongue piercing?! Really?!” Catelyn exclaimed.

“You’re not taking her to get that re-pierced, are you?” Sansa sniggered.

Arya began to cry.


End file.
